Wednesday, August 19, 2015

I keep hoping for a trigger event. Like the time that the US government seemed determined to continue the
war in Viet Nam.
Then, a picture of a screaming nine year old naked child, with her clothes having
been burned off and the look of absolute terror all over her young face
appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Suddenly, this became a
trigger event and Americans began wondering if this was the way to peace in Viet Nam.

I also think of all the preaching in Montgomery, Alabama
denouncing segregation as an evil system.
Very little changed. Then one
day, Rosa Parks simply said, “I’m not going to sit in the back of the
bus.” That became the trigger event that
lead to the civil rights of African Americans all over the southland.

I had hoped that the deliberate murder of 23 year old Rachael Corrie would have generated enough of a backlash that finally
the US
government would rise up and say, this has gone too far. But in spite of the gory details of a
multi-ton bulldozer crushing the life out of a young American girl,
condemnation of Israel
gained little traction. Then, when
Israel bombarded Gaza last summer for 51 straight days, I thought, surely this
massacre of over two thousand people will spark a reaction
to Israel’s senseless claim to own all of Palestine because “God” gave it to
the Jews”. Yet again, when the bombs stopped falling and Gaza
was left a pile of rubble, the nations of the world, especially the US, considered
the conflict to be settled.

So, I ask, could the terrorist attack that burned little 18
month old Ali Dawabsha alive while he was sleeping in his own bed, become the
trigger event that calls into question the whole oppressive regime of Israel’s
occupation? At least, people are talking about it. The Associated press
reported in American newspapers:

Israel intensified its crackdown on
Jewish extremists Sunday imprisoning two high profile ultranationalist Israelis
for six months without charge and arresting additional suspects in West
Bank…The crackdown comes after a deadly July 31 firebomb attack on a
Palestinian home in the West Bank that killed an 18 month old and his father
and severely wounding his mother and brother.[1]

One can only imagine the panic and fear that gripped two parents
who in spite of exploding flames tried to save their children.

Netanyahu is “shocked”, he said. But he could not be
surprised. He appointed as Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who actively called
for the genocide of Palestinians and championed calling their children “little
snakes.” [2] It
was Netanyahu who had called for the bombardment of Gaza where 500 children
were burned, blown up or crushed to death in what he called “revenge,” the very
same word those who burned little Ali and his family alive spray painted on the
wall of his house. And Netanyahu continues to provide state funds and weapons
to every settler and refuses to crack down on the thousands of settler violence
targeting Palestinians. It was only a matter of time.

There have been some 2,100 settler attacks since 2006, including
120 in the 222 days of 2015 so far… only 1.4% of those who murder Palestinian
children are ever indicted. Juliana
Farha says, “This might be news to you, but rest assured that Bibi knows all
about it.”[3]

Shahd Abusalama, writing for Mondoweiss:

As one who carries the memories of
many brutal Israeli attacks on Gaza,
this claimed “shock” didn’t hit me. It rather outraged me at Israel’s crocodile
tears and pretentious humanitarianism, despite its brutal military occupation
of West Bank, the continued expansion of
its illegal settlements, the suffocating siege of the Gaza Strip that remain in
ruins after Israel’s genocidal war last summer, and its ongoing assertion of
itself as a “Jewish State” not a state for its citizens, as it discriminates
against 1948 Palestinian citizens of Israel, or what its leaders call a
“potential fifth column.”[4]

Netanyahu had to say something, no matter how disingenuous
it might be. More than 2,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the
killing. Gilad Erdan, a member of
Netanyahu’s cabinet said, “A nation whose children were burned in the Holocaust
needs to do a lot of soul searching if it bred people who burn other human
beings.” Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh
Atid party, compared Jewish terrorist to ISIS.
David Grossman wrote in the daily newspaper, Haaretz, “I can’t get this baby,
Ali Dawabsheh, out of my mind.[5]Israeli president Reuven Rivlin said, “I feel a sense of
shame, and moreover a sense of pain. Pain over the murder of a small boy. Pain
that from my people, there are those who have chosen the path of terrorism, and
have lost their humanity.”[6]

A prime example of "lost humanity" was when Nasar Jaber, a Palestinian youth in
Ramallah simply wished a young soldier at a check point to have a “good
day.” The soldier stopped him. “Am I
your friend to wish me a good day? The soldier then struck Jabar in the head
with the butt of his rifle, fracturing his jaw, and detained him two hours
before allowing him to be taken to a hospital.[7]

According to B’Tselem,
in the past three years since August 2012, Israeli citizens set fire to nine
Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
Additionally, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Palestinian taxi, severely
burning the family on board. No one was charged in any of these cases… In
recent years Israeli citizens set fire to dozens of Palestinian homes, mosques,
businesses, agricultural land and vehicles in the West
Bank. The vast majority of these cases were never solved, and in
many of them the Police did not even bother to take elementary investigative
action.[8]

Again, could the murder of
little Ali Dawabsheh become the trigger event that turns the tide of Israel’s public
opinion against Netanyahu’s reign of terror?
For the first time in decades, it seems possible.

[8] Press
releases from B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the
OccupiedTerritories, B’tselem:
A Burned Infant was only a Matter of Time in view of Policy to Not Enforce Law
on Violent Settlers. published July 31, 2015.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

As I consider the violations of
human rights and all that Israel
does to dishonor and humiliate their Palestinian neighbors, I think it would be
a shorter list to try to come up with what Israel has not done. Israel has not built
gas chambers, has not used Palestinian bodies for medical experiments, or rounded
up young Palestinian girls to be sex slaves. That is to be commended. But when compared with its record of human
rights abuse, it is hard to overlook so many similarities with Nazi-like
practices in which Israel engages in seeking a “final solution” to its
“Palestinian problem.” It’s not that Zionist Israel is totally
similar to Nazi Germany. It’s that Israel is not un-similar enough in its
Nazi-like tactics. “Death to Arabs,”
expresses the mood of the day and it has been for a long time.

In writing of the founding of Israel
as a state, historian Arnold J. Toynbee declared:

The treatment of the Palestinian
Arabs in 1947 (and 1948) was as morally indefensible as the slaughter of six
million Jews by the Nazis…Though not comparable in quantity to the crimes of
the Nazis, it was comparable in quality.[i]

Chris Hedges summarizes how it
is today:

Israel’s goal is
to make life a living hell for all Palestinians, ethnically cleansing as many
as it can and subduing those who remain. The peace process is a sham. It has
led to Israel’s seizure of more
than half the land on the West Bank, including the aquifers, and the herding of
Palestinians into squalid ghettos or Bantustans
while turning Palestinian land and homes over to Jewish settlers. Israel is expanding settlements, especially in East Jerusalem. Racial laws, once championed by the
right-wing demagogue Mier Kahane, openly discriminate against Israeli Arabs and
Palestinians.[ii]

A report by Action on Armed
Violence found that Israel killed and injured more civilians with
explosive weapons in 2014 than any other country in the world.[iii]

When Palestinians cry out to the world, “our lives matter,” they
are not just asking that they be allowed to live, but that they be given the
same dignity and security that any life deserves. Try putting yourself in their place:

We as Palestinians are daily
humiliated by the Israeli forces; our human rights are violated daily; our
homes are demolished daily by bulldozers manufactured in the United States; our
olive trees are uprooted on a daily basis; our land is confiscated and turned
over into illegal settlements daily; our young people languish in Israeli jails
with no charges or due process for months on end; our teenagers are taken from
their beds in the middle of the night and imprisoned by the Israeli army on an
average two by night; and the Israeli government continues its violations of
international law while the nations of the world remain silent.[iv]

It’s not just that Israel, up-roots trees by the thousands,
destroys homes, schools and wells, Israel
has a record of horrible treatment of children.

Children in the West Bank:

--- Face arrest
without warning, military courts, and physical violence at the hands of the
Israeli forces. According to Defense of
Children International Palestine, 500 to 700 children each year are arrested
and come into contact with the Israeli military system in the West
Bank.

--- Over half
of the arrests take place during raids on homes in the middle of the night. Children
are routinely blindfolded and have reported being beaten, insulted, and
threatened with rape.

--- A 2013
UNICEF report concluded that, ”the ill-treatment of children who come in
contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic
and institutionalized.[v]

The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs asks:

Do you know
what American taxpayer money to Israel
supports? Among other things, it funds the IDF’s detention of thousands of Palestinian
children --- 8,000 since 2000 --- who are pulled from their beds in the middle
of the night, often beaten, denied access to their parents, food or a lawyer,
and held without charge.[vi]

What will it take for us, the United States, to wake up and
acknowledge the fact that, “Children’s lives matter,” even if they are Palestinians?
Yet, the US
stands alone as the only country in the world to oppose a resolution by the
United Nations Human Rights Council calling for Israel to be accountable for war
crimes.

Someone is going to say, “Oh come on. Comparing Zionist
Israel to Nazi Germany
is a bit over the top.” And I will say,
“Make you case. I have made mine,”
except to point out that the world went to war to stop Nazi Germany. On the
other hand, Israel it still
at it, and the world, especially the US, looks the other way as
Zionism’s brutality rages on.

[vi] These
disturbing details were noted at a June 2 congregational briefing that featured
Tariq Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old American teen beaten by Israeli police last
summer. While he is now free, hundreds of children who don’t enjoy the
privileges of American citizenship remain in Israeli prisons. Reported in The Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, August, 2015.

Thomas L. Are

I preached for forty three years in the Presbyterian Church before retiring. If anyone would ever refer to me as a Liberation Theologian, I would be pleased. I started blogging several years ago to express my political and religious concern for justice, especially justice for the Palestinians.